Why do we avoid attending psychotherapy?

You may have noticed that Human beings are generally afraid of the unknown.. This is a primitive nerubiological effect that works in automatic mode, designed to protect us from danger.

When we are faced with a situation that puts us at risk, we feel fear. Fear acts as an alert that if we know how to read it will be useful, as a tool that will mobilize us to place us safely, initiating the physiological fight, flight or freeze defense mechanisms. In this way we learn to read from the environment certain patterns that make us perceive what is daily and normal and before what which we are safe because the existing risks are not more alert since we have already learned to defend ourselves against these.

The opposite case occurs when something new arises, which is out of the pattern.. Faced with this new thing, we not only don't know what it is, we don't know how to deal with it; therefore, we consider that we are facing a potential risk, (emotional, physical, life and many more), and fear arises and with it we will react in some physiological way of fight or flight.

• Related article: "The 8 benefits of going to psychological therapy"

When we do not know something, our first tendency is to alert and fear arises.

This way of protecting ourselves operates in all areas of our lives. For example, when we are offered a new job position, when a new colleague arrives, when we start a new job or project, when we are invited to meet new friends, when a son or daughter is born, when we go on a trip, when we start a relationship and every time we tackle challenges together, and of course, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, among many other possibilities.

AND in the same way it happens with our inner world, with our subjectivity. It happens to many people that it causes them a lot of fear and they even refuse to look into their own inner world. Carrying out an EMDR psychological therapy process involves seeing yourself, confronting your inner life, learning to look and find what bothers you.

The feeling of fear when promoting self-awareness in therapy

It is expected that fear arises, since it is unknown. Usually no one teaches us, we do not learn to relate to ourselves, only to the external. They teach us that when we feel sorry we have to make it go away, "don't cry", they told us, "it's not a big deal, dry your tears and come to dinner, there's no reason to be sad". That is, we learn to avoid our subjective activity. Or we learn to deny what is happening to us, like when it happened to us: "Dad, I have a problem, all the children have a green backpack and I have a yellow one and they make fun of me... That's not a problem, the problem is what I have at work, go do your homework”.

By encouraging us to avoid, deny and further minimize our needs as a child, it is expected that we it is difficult as adults to take care of ourselves, understand what is happening to us and solve our states emotional.

There are many people who do not know themselves, and I mean beyond the visible qualities or behaviors, (that is, I am intelligent, I have creativity, I like to sing, I get angry when I am lied to or I am sociable...). I mean observing our mind and noticing what emotions arise, what it feels like, what is the correlate body, what are the thoughts, the positive and negative beliefs of me, of the world, the worldview.

Achieving this implies relating to oneself, which is already complex if it has never been done. And trying to do it is overwhelming, since you don't know how to proceed; in fact, some people feel ridiculous. And there is the "risk" that you could see something that you don't want to see, because you wouldn't know what to do with it or tolerate it, which translates into something unknown. Let's remember that what is not known is feared, what is out of the pattern, because it puts us out of our comfort zone.

The issue is that we are focused more abroad, with a Control locus placed on the other, and when difficulties begin to arise, we always repair what the other does or does not do to us, the defects of the other, "that the other does not love me, does not listen to me, does not know what makes me happy", and we give more control to the rest of the people in our lives than to ourselves themselves. We wait for them to give us solutions or for the other to change in order to feel loved, and since this does not happen, the discomforts continue and begin to become more evident, overwhelming and unmanageable.

To do?

To solve what happens to us, we have to start by stopping avoiding, denying, minimizing our inner world, our real needs for love, our emotions and thoughts, and start by relating to ourselves, bonding, looking at each other, even if we don't like what we see. Only in this way will we fully understand what is happening to us, the possible and varied causes, in order to seek solutions and make more appropriate decisions.

This is one of the initial challenges of EMDR psychological therapy, getting the person to learn to know themselves, stop avoiding, identify and attend to their self-care needs. Whoever manages to take the step improves his inner quality of life and as a consequence changes the way he throws himself into life.. Because her paradigm of how she perceives society, people and relationships and how she perceives herself changes. Thoughts and emotions are regulated, you stop feeling so much fear, anxiety, grief. The negative beliefs of the "Self" are adapted with conviction, by a "I am loved", "I can achieve it", "I am safe", "I can overcome the challenges", among others, as the case may be. .